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The best of plans are subject to the banal reservation, "weather permitting," and the signal intended to bring Bosambo to his destruction was swallowed up in the bellowings of the storm. "This night being fine," said N'gori, showing his teeth, "Bosambo will surely come." His Chief Counsellor, an ancient man of the royal tribe, had unexpected warnings to offer.
Two nights after, the call was repeated this time with greater detail. An N'gombi force of countless spears had seized the village of Doozani and was threatening the capital. Again Bosambo carried his spears to a killing, and again was met by an apologetic N'gori.
This much Hamilton was to learn: for Tibbetts had been sent with a party of Houssas to squash effectively an incipient rebellion in the Akasava, and having caught N'gori in the very act of most treacherously and most damnably preparing an ambush for a virtuous Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, had done no more than fine him ten dollars.
And no sooner was it up than my lord Sandi had changed his mind and must have it in another place. Sanders would come back at intervals to see how the work was progressing. At last it was fixed, that monstrous pole, and the men of the village sighed thankfully. "Lord, tell me," N'gori had asked, "why you put this great stick in the ground?"
"Lord," said Kelili, "there is to be a killing palaver between the Ochori and the Akasava on the first rise of the full moon, for N'gori speaks of Bosambo evilly, and says that the Chief has raided him.
"I thank all my little gods you have come, my lord," said he, humbly; "for in the night one of my young men saw an Isisi army coming against us." "Where is the army?" demanded a weary Bosambo. "Lord, it has not come," said N'gori, glibly; "for hearing of your lordship and your swift canoes, I think it had run away." Bosambo's force paddled back to the Ochori city the next day.
Yet if he left the spears there would be trouble for him. Then a bright thought flicked: "If bad men come you shall send for me and I will bring my fine young soldiers. The palaver is finished." With this course N'gori must feign agreement. He watched the departing army paddlers sitting on swathes of filched spears.
Bosambo heard the message in the still of the early night, gathered five hundred fighting men, swept down on the Akasava city in the drunken dawn, and carried away two thousand spears of the sodden N'gori.
This is certain, however, that N'gori himself was a good-enough man at heart, and if there was evil in his actions be sure that behind him prompting, whispering, subtly threatening him, was his malignant son, a sinister figure with one eye half closed, and a figure that went limping through the city with a twisted smile.
"Old man, there is a hut in the forest for you," said N'gori, with significance, and the Counsellor wilted, because the huts in the forest are for the sick, the old, and the mad, and here they are left to starve and die; "for," N'gori went on, "all men know that Sandi has gone to his people across the black waters, and the M'ilitani rules.
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